When Eileen Munro's mother became pregnant at 16, she was told to give her baby away to a 'good family', but the couple who paid the fee at the Salvation Army mother-and-baby home in Glasgow in 1963 turned out to be alcoholics who neglected and physically abused Eileen. Then, when their marriage broke down, they failed to protect her from sexual abuse at the hands of a family friend.After watching her adoptive mother drown on inhaled vomit, Eileen and her younger sister were taken ...

In her bestselling memoir As I Lay Me Down to Sleep, Eileen Munro vividly documented the abuse she experienced at the hands of her adoptive parents and, later, within the care system. The birth of Eileen's son, Craig, and her escape from the authorities' clutches should have seen her turn a corner, but she remains haunted by the spectre of her past.In If I Should Die Before I Wake, Eileen chronicles her search for her real parents and her battle for an education f...

In this book, Nancy Cartwright, Eileen Munro and John Pemberton introduce a new method for assessing whether plans for how to affect change produced their intended outcome, or whether they are likely to do so in the future. The method offers the prospect of a step-change improvement in the accuracy of policy assessments, based on a new pluralistic theory of causation. This theory, which goes beyond existing ones, synthesises seven tried and tested familiar component accounts so as to licen...

`Although primarily aimed at social workers, the content of this work is very relevant for other professionals who work with and for children, including trainee lawyers as an introduction to social work practice and the principles of child care law and practice upon which it is based. The book also provides insight for lawyers into the standards to be expected of social workers, which is helpful in children law work. Eileen Munro writes from the perspective of a depth of academic knowledge...

Eileen Munro, author of the seminal Munro Review, returns in this fully revised and updated third edition. With new chapters on ′Child Protection Agencies as Complex Adaptive Systems′ and ′How organisations can support more effective practice′, this new edition shifts its focus from individual workers to look at the critical role that organisations play in child protection, and how individuals are affected by the complex enterprise of people, processes, cultures a...

From the author of international bestsellers A Circle of Children and Lovey comes an inspiring true story of a gifted teacher’s determination to understand the ‘rotten’ city kid everyone has given up on.Sitting quiet and withdrawn at a battered school desk, Luke had the looks of a shy angel – and a past that special needs teacher Mary MacCracken could barely believe.Already Luke had been picked up 24 times by the police. He’d set over a dozen major fires, and had a staggeri...

Sophie Young tells her shocking true story in Please Will Someone Help Me?Sophie Young was born into a dysfunctional family, with a violent mother and father. Sophie was routinely neglected and harmed, starved and left to fend for herself. Social workers were often involved but, despite numerous visits and extensive reports, nothing was ever done.When Sophie was six, her life took another horrible turn: her adored grandfather began to sexually abuse her....

This deeply moving memoir tells the story of Hannah: a child who has been beaten and abused; a girl full of loneliness and rage; a student no one but learning disabilities teacher Mary MacCracken could reach.Mary had reservations about eight-year-old Hannah joining her class. The three emotionally disturbed boys she was currently looking after had been making steady progress, and Hannah, who had a reputation for being a withdrawn and incredibly troubled child, would only be a disru...

A young girl at the mercy of her abusive stepfather and the religious community that protects him - Bad Things in the Night is a moving true story of pain and triumph.As a child Beth was imprisoned within a Jehovah's Witness family, kept away from her mother, forbidden from wearing a school skirt above her knees by day, abused by her stepfather at night. Years later, when she summons the courage to report her stepfather to the police for the first time, she is forced to re...

In the much-anticipated follow-up to Sunday Times bestseller Trapped, foster carer Rosie Lewis tells the heartbreaking true story of 13-year-old Zadie.When the young teenage girl runs away from home and is discovered hiding on the city streets by the police, it is clear that all is not as it should be.Taught to believe that Westerners should not be trusted, when Zadie is initially delivered into the experienced hands of foster carer Rosie she is polite and well-behaved, but...

The second in a series of true short stories from foster carer Mia Marconi.India was a child who was destined to end up in care. She came to foster carer Mia Marconi’s house when she was three; she’d already been in care for five months by then. But her mum Amy didn’t get on with her carer and threatened to kill her so India was moved.But no matter how inadequate parents are, children in care love them and want the world to love them too.Amy had had a hard life: she...

Unforgivable is the shocking real-life story of suffering and survival from child abuse victim Collette Elliott."I brought you into this world and I can take you out with one click of my fingers."What if Baby P or Daniel Pelka had lived to tell their tale?Collette Elliott once had a similar story. She slipped through the net and only just survived.Her childhood was a place of filth and terror. Her prostitute mother abused and neglec...